Three miles farther the cavalcade wound with the frozen river. Dunvegan, brooding within himself as had been his custom of late, took little note of its progress. The leadership had devolved for the moment upon Maskwa. Presently the tall Ojibway answered the call of his stomach. He stopped beneath a jutting headland and looked once at the sun. Then with his native stoicism and abruptness he twisted his heels from the loops of his snowshoes.
"Camp here!" he decided.
CHAPTER XV
MASKWA'S FIND
A fork of fire leaped up under the quick hands of the Indians. The dead spruce boughs crackled merrily. Baptiste Verenne lay back on a pile of green branches before the flames and hummed to the kettles that they might the more quickly melt their contents of snow into steam and boil the tea. His high tenor voice chanted the air of L'Exilé, a song of far-off France. Very softly and dreamily he sang:
"Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance!
Ma cœur, qu'ils étaient beaux, les jours de France!
O mon pays! sois mes amours,
O mon pays! sois mes amours. Toujours!"
Over the spruce fire the kettles began to drone to his music as he went on more tenderly:
"Te souvient-il que notre mère,
Au foyer de notre chaumière,
Nous pressait sur son cœur joyeux
Ma chère?
Et nous baisions ses blancs cheveux.
Tous deux."
Almost while Baptiste sang, the meal was ready. The Hudson's Bay men thawed their strips of jerked caribou over the coals and washed the meat down with small pails of hot tea. They snatched a few whiffs from their pipes before the command to march was given.